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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2020 18:50:49 GMT
When was that written? I believe/suspect it was done sometime during ME3's development cycle. I agree with those who have said that Bioware put some thought into the Me3 endings and eventually produced them, for the most part, as they intended them. However, I don't think they put enough thought into how an entire Trilogy would play out when the started development of ME1. If they did, then those concepts were affected when various personnel left the company during the development of ME2 and ME3; and to an extent, the concepts changed. They may have had a roadmap, but not enough of a roadmap to truly enable them to make a cohesive Trilogy. Add to that, the impact of allowing for different player choices and the demands of making those choices "important" to the story, and the cracks in the plan start to really become evident. That leak's from a script outline that accidentally was packaged with one of the prerelease demos; IIRC the Russian version. Yeah, it's early stuff. Only some of the game was in playable shape on that date, and it predates the final version of the Cerberus Coup, etc. The ending is relatively close to what's in the final game, compared to other sequences. You're misunderstanding. It was prerelease of ME3 and not found packaged with a prerelease demo of ME1 or ME2, right? I think, at most, Drew had a very broad conceptual idea for future games when ME1 was released, but that conceptual plan was sort of lost when Drew left (the first time). I think that had he left a more complete plan for a Trilogy that truly defined the Reapers as something more than "unknowable," the OT would have exhibited more consistency overall and even possibly better foreshadowing of whatever ending they were shooting for initially... even without revealing what the Reapers were in ME1. As it was, I think Bioware's own ideas about what the Reapers were and what role they should serve at the end of the Trilogy kept changing as they worked their way through ME2 and into ME3... starting only then to actually plan for a Trilogy of some sort.
As for ME3 itself (isolated from the other games), I don't doubt they started planning the ending early in that game's development cycle by roughing out the whole game early and going back and inserting more and more of the details and changing some details as the development cycle progressed. What you've shown was obviously changed and refined before the game was released. Even before the EC, synthesis never required the player to have a "perfect game" (as the document suggests). I believe the definitive "Shepard lives" was also intentionally watered down to a single ambiguous breath (something that could be interpreted as Shepard surviving the choice itself but not necessarily living on to fight through another story). Still, it is clear that the ending was intentionally considered early on to become one involving a multiple choice offered to the player and an absolute finale to Shepard's story.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2020 18:54:52 GMT
Game 2 should have been all about gathering allies. We could have gone to all the home worlds and seen them in their prime. Then maybe it ends with a cliffhanger about how Earth has fallen. Then the third game would be able to focus more on the war and finding a way to defeat them. ME2 adding nothing to the main plot forced ME3 to have to carry two games in one. It was well established in ME3 that simply gathering allies and firepower was not going to be enough to defeat the Reapers. The third game does find a way to defeat them, but not using conventional means, because that's impossible. They used the Crucible, combined with the Citadel and the mass relays to do it. As was said at the end of Mass Effect 2 "our best chance against the Reapers is to use their own resources against them".
A lot of people did not like this idea. They wanted to try to defeat the Reapers conventionally on their own terms, despite the game hammering it into people's heads that it was impossible. So they came up with alternatives like "well, instead of the Crucible doing what it did, it should have just done this". Fans basically twisting the plot to suit their own power fantasies.
It's kind of hard to prepare for something like this when no one in the galaxy doesn't even believe the Reaper threat as real. Aside from Shepard, Anderson, and a few of your friends. They lived in denial until the enemy showed up on their doorstep. This idea was basically foreshadowed from the first game and played through until the third game.
Imagine some random guy and his friends who believed an alien invasion on Earth was imminent, and they showed them the proof. Despite those claims, people still didn't believe it. They don't believe aliens exist and that humans are the only ones in the universe. Until the aliens invaded Earth and took it over by force, did they really believe them. That's basically Mass Effect's Reaper story in a nutshell, and why they can't plan for something like this.
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Post by alanc9 on Mar 10, 2020 18:58:11 GMT
Oh, yeah, an ME3 demo. Had to have been written several months before it leaked, judging from how much stuff was completely rewritten. But well into ME3 production, absolutely.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2020 19:02:02 GMT
I didn't find much difference between the demo and the final game regarding the prologue and Sur'Kesh. It was pretty much set in stone, finalized.
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Post by KaiserShep on Mar 10, 2020 19:44:41 GMT
The two year gap between ME1 and ME2 can be explained by the Reapers harvesting everyone every 50,000 years on their time schedule. So in 2183, it's 49,998 years by their count. So not quite ready to begin the harvest. Harbinger and the other Reapers were awake at the time, but they weren't ready to begin their journey to the Milky Way. If people expected that ME2 was going to be the start of the Reaper invasion, they were going to be disappointed. The Reaper invasion lasted one game, there's no need for it to last two games. At the end of the second game, you'd be still in the middle of the war with a "to be continued" at the end. While ME1 suggests that the reaper invasion was likely behind, due to Sovereign's seemingly desperate cover blowing, the closest approximation to the actual time of invasion we have to go on is from Chorban's email regarding the Keepers, where at some point at the time of his sending it, the reapers were to due to arrive judging from the variances picked up in the scan results. It's a safe assumption that if the Keepers were not sabotaged by the Protheans, the reapers would probably have already invaded well before the events of Mass Effect 2. Sovereign and the Collectors have a clear Plan B and C type of approach to the story, otherwise what they're doing doesn't really make sense, since they could just lay in wait for the main fleet to arrive and they could join the fray. I think there's a misconception about the expectation of the invasion. I doubt anyone truly expected the invasion to happen across 2 games. If I'm honest, I think the invasion itself wasn't really presented properly anyway, because it negates the whole idea of the relay trap. What made the trap so compelling was that it suggested that the reapers might suffer dramatically if they chose to operate without it at the hands of a galactic community that's been reverse engineering its technologies for hundreds if not thousands of years at that point.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2020 19:58:56 GMT
The two year gap between ME1 and ME2 can be explained by the Reapers harvesting everyone every 50,000 years on their time schedule. So in 2183, it's 49,998 years by their count. So not quite ready to begin the harvest. Harbinger and the other Reapers were awake at the time, but they weren't ready to begin their journey to the Milky Way. If people expected that ME2 was going to be the start of the Reaper invasion, they were going to be disappointed. The Reaper invasion lasted one game, there's no need for it to last two games. At the end of the second game, you'd be still in the middle of the war with a "to be continued" at the end. While ME1 suggests that the reaper invasion was likely behind, due to Sovereign's seemingly desperate cover blowing, the closest approximation to the actual time of invasion we have to go on is from Chorban's email regarding the Keepers, where at some point at the time of his sending it, the reapers were to due to arrive judging from the variances picked up in the scan results. It's a safe assumption that if the Keepers were not sabotaged by the Protheans, the reapers would probably have already invaded well before the events of Mass Effect 2. Sovereign and the Collectors have a clear Plan B and C type of approach to the story, otherwise what they're doing doesn't really make sense, since they could just lay in wait for the main fleet to arrive and they could join the fray. I think there's a misconception about the expectation of the invasion. I doubt anyone truly expected the invasion to happen across 2 games. If I'm honest, I think the invasion itself wasn't really presented properly anyway, because it negates the whole idea of the relay trap. What made the trap so compelling was that it suggested that the reapers might suffer dramatically if they chose to operate without it at the hands of a galactic community that's been reverse engineering its technologies for hundreds if not thousands of years at that point. I found it odd that the Reapers didn't just plant an indoctrination beacon of some type on the Citadel itself such that anyone living there would eventually become indoctrinated and each civilization would just collapse from within as the Citadel's entire population welcomed the Reapers with open arms. The whole idea of the keepers being needed was undermined by Arrival, which showed that entire groups of people could be indoctrinated via exposure over a period of time to a mere Reaper artifact.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2020 20:16:00 GMT
While ME1 suggests that the reaper invasion was likely behind, due to Sovereign's seemingly desperate cover blowing, the closest approximation to the actual time of invasion we have to go on is from Chorban's email regarding the Keepers, where at some point at the time of his sending it, the reapers were to due to arrive judging from the variances picked up in the scan results. It's a safe assumption that if the Keepers were not sabotaged by the Protheans, the reapers would probably have already invaded well before the events of Mass Effect 2. Sovereign and the Collectors have a clear Plan B and C type of approach to the story, otherwise what they're doing doesn't really make sense, since they could just lay in wait for the main fleet to arrive and they could join the fray. I think there's a misconception about the expectation of the invasion. I doubt anyone truly expected the invasion to happen across 2 games. If I'm honest, I think the invasion itself wasn't really presented properly anyway, because it negates the whole idea of the relay trap. What made the trap so compelling was that it suggested that the reapers might suffer dramatically if they chose to operate without it at the hands of a galactic community that's been reverse engineering its technologies for hundreds if not thousands of years at that point. I found it odd that the Reapers didn't just plant an indoctrination beacon of some type on the Citadel itself such that anyone living there would eventually become indoctrinated and each civilization would just collapse from within as the Citadel's entire population welcomed the Reapers with open arms. The whole idea of the keepers being needed was undermined by Arrival, which showed that entire groups of people could be indoctrinated via exposure over a period of time to a mere Reaper artifact. The Citadel is the hub of the relay network. With that said everyone on the Citadel is basically aboard a giant piece of Reaper tech. So there's definitely some subtle indoctrination going on.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2020 20:21:17 GMT
I found it odd that the Reapers didn't just plant an indoctrination beacon of some type on the Citadel itself such that anyone living there would eventually become indoctrinated and each civilization would just collapse from within as the Citadel's entire population welcomed the Reapers with open arms. The whole idea of the keepers being needed was undermined by Arrival, which showed that entire groups of people could be indoctrinated via exposure over a period of time to a mere Reaper artifact. The Citadel is the hub of the relay network. With that said everyone on the Citadel is basically aboard a giant piece of Reaper tech. So there's definitely some subtle indoctrination going on. Why is it so subtle though that the Reapers have to use Kenson and a different Reaper artifact to gain access to the galaxy? If the mini-Relay was instead conceived as a Reaper artifact, both ME1's story and ME2's story get blown right out of the water and sunk into one big gaping plot hole. If the Reaper's couldn't get into the galaxy and the relay network themselves, how could they get Kenson to find the Reaper artifact in ME2? If they didn't plant it inside the galaxy before they left 50,000 years earlier, it means they would have had to plant it... and would have thus had access to the Relay network all along? Who needed the keepers to do anything?
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Post by KaiserShep on Mar 10, 2020 20:54:17 GMT
While ME1 suggests that the reaper invasion was likely behind, due to Sovereign's seemingly desperate cover blowing, the closest approximation to the actual time of invasion we have to go on is from Chorban's email regarding the Keepers, where at some point at the time of his sending it, the reapers were to due to arrive judging from the variances picked up in the scan results. It's a safe assumption that if the Keepers were not sabotaged by the Protheans, the reapers would probably have already invaded well before the events of Mass Effect 2. Sovereign and the Collectors have a clear Plan B and C type of approach to the story, otherwise what they're doing doesn't really make sense, since they could just lay in wait for the main fleet to arrive and they could join the fray. I think there's a misconception about the expectation of the invasion. I doubt anyone truly expected the invasion to happen across 2 games. If I'm honest, I think the invasion itself wasn't really presented properly anyway, because it negates the whole idea of the relay trap. What made the trap so compelling was that it suggested that the reapers might suffer dramatically if they chose to operate without it at the hands of a galactic community that's been reverse engineering its technologies for hundreds if not thousands of years at that point. I found it odd that the Reapers didn't just plant an indoctrination beacon of some type on the Citadel itself such that anyone living there would eventually become indoctrinated and each civilization would just collapse from within as the Citadel's entire population welcomed the Reapers with open arms. The whole idea of the keepers being needed was undermined by Arrival, which showed that entire groups of people could be indoctrinated via exposure over a period of time to a mere Reaper artifact. To go further than that, the reapers could have simply influenced the minds of civilization to simply not build synthetics, a more advanced level of control than the Leviathan's over their own thralls, but they don't. There's a lot of things the reapers could have done, but then we wouldn't have a game to play.
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Post by KaiserShep on Mar 10, 2020 20:56:14 GMT
I found it odd that the Reapers didn't just plant an indoctrination beacon of some type on the Citadel itself such that anyone living there would eventually become indoctrinated and each civilization would just collapse from within as the Citadel's entire population welcomed the Reapers with open arms. The whole idea of the keepers being needed was undermined by Arrival, which showed that entire groups of people could be indoctrinated via exposure over a period of time to a mere Reaper artifact. The Citadel is the hub of the relay network. With that said everyone on the Citadel is basically aboard a giant piece of Reaper tech. So there's definitely some subtle indoctrination going on. There's no indoctrination going on aboard the Citadel because of the station itself. This would be entirely fabricated by fans, not something that the story itself reveals, even implicitly.
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Post by themikefest on Mar 10, 2020 21:21:38 GMT
Game 2 should have been all about gathering allies. We could have gone to all the home worlds and seen them in their prime. Then maybe it ends with a cliffhanger about how Earth has fallen. Then the third game would be able to focus more on the war and finding a way to defeat them. ME2 adding nothing to the main plot forced ME3 to have to carry two games in one. I would change a few things in ME1 so that ME2 can be about Shepard going to darkspace to get answers about the reapers, and how to deal with them. The collectors could be a very long side mission. Once back from darkspace, Shepard does the Arrival dlc. During Shepard's 6 month vacation, the other species have been slowly putting plans into place for dealing with the reapers. ME3 could be nearly the same, gather allies, and use the information Shepard found in darkspace to stopping the reapers. One change I would make is not have Shepard die at the beginning of ME2.
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Post by KaiserShep on Mar 10, 2020 21:37:41 GMT
Game 2 should have been all about gathering allies. We could have gone to all the home worlds and seen them in their prime. Then maybe it ends with a cliffhanger about how Earth has fallen. Then the third game would be able to focus more on the war and finding a way to defeat them. ME2 adding nothing to the main plot forced ME3 to have to carry two games in one. I would change a few things in ME1 so that ME2 can be about Shepard going to darkspace to get answers about the reapers, and how to deal with them. The collectors could be a very long side mission. Once back from darkspace, Shepard does the Arrival dlc. During Shepard's 6 month vacation, the other species have been slowly putting plans into place for dealing with the reapers. ME3 could be nearly the same, gather allies, and use the information Shepard found in darkspace to stopping the reapers. One change I would make is not have Shepard die at the beginning of ME2. To be perfectly honest, I could do with a straightforward archaic blow-up-the-dark-relay conclusion after finding out what we need to. Imagine the light show in the blackness beyond the galactic horizon, and in that flash, the filth that is the Milky Way kill-farmers get deleted in a single instance.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2020 22:16:49 GMT
I found it odd that the Reapers didn't just plant an indoctrination beacon of some type on the Citadel itself such that anyone living there would eventually become indoctrinated and each civilization would just collapse from within as the Citadel's entire population welcomed the Reapers with open arms. The whole idea of the keepers being needed was undermined by Arrival, which showed that entire groups of people could be indoctrinated via exposure over a period of time to a mere Reaper artifact. To go further than that, the reapers could have simply influenced the minds of civilization to simply not build synthetics, a more advanced level of control than the Leviathan's over their own thralls, but they don't. There's a lot of things the reapers could have done, but then we wouldn't have a game to play. Even so, Kenson shows us implicitly that part of the indoctrination they do use on her is for her to want to see the Reapers arrive. Merely putting that same artifact on the Citadel instead of wherever they left it for Kenson to find would have ensured that the population would have wanted them to come. The whole premise of Saren and the Keepers being needed in ME1 goes out the window with the Arrival DLC... no imagined power required.
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Post by KaiserShep on Mar 10, 2020 23:25:51 GMT
Heh a lot of things are out the window by the end of Arrival. I wonder what would happen if Harbinger showed up the second the asteroid collided with the relay. It’d be all “oh......shit”
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2020 23:48:25 GMT
Heh a lot of things are out the window by the end of Arrival. I wonder what would happen if Harbinger showed up the second the asteroid collided with the relay. It’d be all “oh......shit” Yes, even the Crucible, low EMS Destroy did not do the amount of damage the asteroid hitting the relay did.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2020 0:52:35 GMT
The Citadel is the hub of the relay network. With that said everyone on the Citadel is basically aboard a giant piece of Reaper tech. So there's definitely some subtle indoctrination going on. There's no indoctrination going on aboard the Citadel because of the station itself. This would be entirely fabricated by fans, not something that the story itself reveals, even implicitly. So boarding the Citadel has a different effect than when Saren and Benezia boarded Sovereign? They're both Reapers or Reaper tech. It was stated in ME1 that the longer one stays aboard a Reaper the more they seem to think Sovereign's will is correct (game said Saren, but Sovereign is manipulating Saren, not the other way around). The Citadel may have behavior modification techniques that are unnoticeable to anyone.
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Post by Ascend on Mar 11, 2020 12:25:34 GMT
While ME1 suggests that the reaper invasion was likely behind, due to Sovereign's seemingly desperate cover blowing, the closest approximation to the actual time of invasion we have to go on is from Chorban's email regarding the Keepers, where at some point at the time of his sending it, the reapers were to due to arrive judging from the variances picked up in the scan results. It's a safe assumption that if the Keepers were not sabotaged by the Protheans, the reapers would probably have already invaded well before the events of Mass Effect 2. Sovereign and the Collectors have a clear Plan B and C type of approach to the story, otherwise what they're doing doesn't really make sense, since they could just lay in wait for the main fleet to arrive and they could join the fray. I think there's a misconception about the expectation of the invasion. I doubt anyone truly expected the invasion to happen across 2 games. If I'm honest, I think the invasion itself wasn't really presented properly anyway, because it negates the whole idea of the relay trap. What made the trap so compelling was that it suggested that the reapers might suffer dramatically if they chose to operate without it at the hands of a galactic community that's been reverse engineering its technologies for hundreds if not thousands of years at that point. I found it odd that the Reapers didn't just plant an indoctrination beacon of some type on the Citadel itself such that anyone living there would eventually become indoctrinated and each civilization would just collapse from within as the Citadel's entire population welcomed the Reapers with open arms. The whole idea of the keepers being needed was undermined by Arrival, which showed that entire groups of people could be indoctrinated via exposure over a period of time to a mere Reaper artifact. One of the main aspects of indoctrination is that it stagnates development. It's stated in the codex that the more indoctrinated an individual is, the less capable that individual becomes. The same applies for the speed of indoctrination; the faster it is, the quicker the capacity of the indoctrinated deteriorate. Based on the information from the 3rd game, the reapers don't technically want to interfere with organic development. It's the reason they leave species that are not advanced enough (like the Yagh in this cycle) alone. They basically want to allow organics to develop as much as possible, without them destroying themselves with technology. The 'reaping' is supposed to be an eternal storage of the organics at their peak of development. If the Citadel would indoctrinate the organics as soon as they discovered it, the organics would never reach their peak, because the indoctrination stagnates their development. I'm not saying this is 'right' or whatever. But it is the way the reapers think and the main reason that the Citadel itself does not cause indoctrination. Indoctrination is a method to ultimately "save" as much of the organics as possible. They are willing to sacrifice a portion of the species to "save" the majority, where "saving" means literally saving them in reaper form, like data on a hard drive. Game 2 should have been all about gathering allies. We could have gone to all the home worlds and seen them in their prime. Then maybe it ends with a cliffhanger about how Earth has fallen. Then the third game would be able to focus more on the war and finding a way to defeat them. ME2 adding nothing to the main plot forced ME3 to have to carry two games in one. I fully agree with this. That is what I expected from the second game. Arrival should have been DLC for the first game. I've seen it argued on here that ME1 and ME2 should be flipped plot-wise, and honestly, that makes things a lot better, with a few minor changes (like Shepard not dying).
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2020 15:00:03 GMT
I found it odd that the Reapers didn't just plant an indoctrination beacon of some type on the Citadel itself such that anyone living there would eventually become indoctrinated and each civilization would just collapse from within as the Citadel's entire population welcomed the Reapers with open arms. The whole idea of the keepers being needed was undermined by Arrival, which showed that entire groups of people could be indoctrinated via exposure over a period of time to a mere Reaper artifact. One of the main aspects of indoctrination is that it stagnates development. It's stated in the codex that the more indoctrinated an individual is, the less capable that individual becomes. The same applies for the speed of indoctrination; the faster it is, the quicker the capacity of the indoctrinated deteriorate. Based on the information from the 3rd game, the reapers don't technically want to interfere with organic development. It's the reason they leave species that are not advanced enough (like the Yagh in this cycle) alone. They basically want to allow organics to develop as much as possible, without them destroying themselves with technology. The 'reaping' is supposed to be an eternal storage of the organics at their peak of development. If the Citadel would indoctrinate the organics as soon as they discovered it, the organics would never reach their peak, because the indoctrination stagnates their development. I'm not saying this is 'right' or whatever. But it is the way the reapers think and the main reason that the Citadel itself does not cause indoctrination. Indoctrination is a method to ultimately "save" as much of the organics as possible. They are willing to sacrifice a portion of the species to "save" the majority, where "saving" means literally saving them in reaper form, like data on a hard drive. Game 2 should have been all about gathering allies. We could have gone to all the home worlds and seen them in their prime. Then maybe it ends with a cliffhanger about how Earth has fallen. Then the third game would be able to focus more on the war and finding a way to defeat them. ME2 adding nothing to the main plot forced ME3 to have to carry two games in one. I fully agree with this. That is what I expected from the second game. Arrival should have been DLC for the first game. I've seen it argued on here that ME1 and ME2 should be flipped plot-wise, and honestly, that makes things a lot better, with a few minor changes (like Shepard not dying). Still doesn't explain it. The Reapers Plan B involved Kenson first finding the artifact and then she became indoctrinated very quickly. For it to have any hope of being effective, they must have been able to control or at least influence when Kenson found the artifact... otherwise its just left to random chance and could have stayed undiscovered for another 50,000 years. If such an artifact could be left in the galaxy by the Reapers and found if needed as a Plan A instead; that is, Sovereign could have then just directed Saren (or any other previous lackey) to find it and bring it to the Citadel for study (something that was normally done since Anderson says right at the start of ME1 that the Prothean beacon needed to be taken to the Citadel for "proper study.". Once on the Citadel, the artifact could then just completely indoctrinate the population... and that population would have welcomed the Reapers with open arms. Sovereign would have no need to worry about whether or not the Keepers opened the Relay via a signal from the Reapers. He would never have had to worry about confronting Citadel defenses.
The details don't really matter here - what Arrival shows us is that the Reapers had artifacts that could allow mass indoctrination to occur rapidly within a population. Proximity to an individual Reaper was not actually required. It also shows us that such artifacts were present in the galaxy and that the Reapers should know where they left them. ME1 shows us that Sovereign had the ability to recruit at least 1 lackey to do his dirty work for him (Saren)... but instead of having that lackey chase all over the galaxy looking for the Conduit, all Sovereign had to do was tell him... "Here's where you'll find this artifact and then just bring it to the Citadel and give it to the scientists there." Job done. The scientists studying the artifact are indoctrinated, told how to open the relay, and the Reapers pour into the galaxy in an completely surprise attack.
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Post by KaiserShep on Mar 11, 2020 15:08:04 GMT
I fully agree with this. That is what I expected from the second game. Arrival should have been DLC for the first game. I've seen it argued on here that ME1 and ME2 should be flipped plot-wise, and honestly, that makes things a lot better, with a few minor changes (like Shepard not dying). Really, I think Arrival is fundamentally broken in terms of its plot logic. I get the whole idea of destroying the relay to stop the reapers, but the existence of both the Alpha Relay and the Project Rho artifact raise tons of nagging questions that make ME2 even more problematic in its place in the trilogy.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2020 15:17:08 GMT
I fully agree with this. That is what I expected from the second game. Arrival should have been DLC for the first game. I've seen it argued on here that ME1 and ME2 should be flipped plot-wise, and honestly, that makes things a lot better, with a few minor changes (like Shepard not dying). Really, I think Arrival is fundamentally broken in terms of its plot logic. I get the whole idea of destroying the relay to stop the reapers, but the existence of both the Alpha Relay and the Project Rho artifact raise tons of nagging questions that make ME2 even more problematic in its place in the trilogy. I fully agree with this. Arrival is fundamentally broken.
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Post by Ascend on Mar 11, 2020 15:21:38 GMT
One of the main aspects of indoctrination is that it stagnates development. It's stated in the codex that the more indoctrinated an individual is, the less capable that individual becomes. The same applies for the speed of indoctrination; the faster it is, the quicker the capacity of the indoctrinated deteriorate. Based on the information from the 3rd game, the reapers don't technically want to interfere with organic development. It's the reason they leave species that are not advanced enough (like the Yagh in this cycle) alone. They basically want to allow organics to develop as much as possible, without them destroying themselves with technology. The 'reaping' is supposed to be an eternal storage of the organics at their peak of development. If the Citadel would indoctrinate the organics as soon as they discovered it, the organics would never reach their peak, because the indoctrination stagnates their development. I'm not saying this is 'right' or whatever. But it is the way the reapers think and the main reason that the Citadel itself does not cause indoctrination. Indoctrination is a method to ultimately "save" as much of the organics as possible. They are willing to sacrifice a portion of the species to "save" the majority, where "saving" means literally saving them in reaper form, like data on a hard drive. I fully agree with this. That is what I expected from the second game. Arrival should have been DLC for the first game. I've seen it argued on here that ME1 and ME2 should be flipped plot-wise, and honestly, that makes things a lot better, with a few minor changes (like Shepard not dying). Still doesn't explain it. The Reapers Plan B involved Kenson first finding the artifact and then she became indoctrinated very quickly. For it to have any hope of being effective, they must have been able to control or at least influence when Kenson found the artifact... otherwise its just left to random chance and could have stayed undiscovered for another 50,000 years. If such an artifact could be left in the galaxy by the Reapers and found if needed as a Plan A instead; that is, Sovereign could have then just directed Saren (or any other previous lackey) to find it and bring it to the Citadel for study (something that was normally done since Anderson says right at the start of ME1 that the Prothean beacon needed to be taken to the Citadel for "proper study.". Once on the Citadel, the artifact could then just completely indoctrinate the population... and that population would have welcomed the Reapers with open arms. Sovereign would have no need to worry about whether or not the Keepers opened the Relay via a signal from the Reapers. He would never have had to worry about confronting Citadel defenses.
The details don't really matter here - what Arrival shows us is that the Reapers had artifacts that could allow mass indoctrination to occur rapidly within a population. Proximity to an individual Reaper was not actually required. It also shows us that such artifacts were present in the galaxy and that the Reapers should know where they left them. ME1 shows us that Sovereign had the ability to recruit at least 1 lackey to do his dirty work for him (Saren)... but instead of having that lackey chase all over the galaxy looking for the Conduit, all Sovereign had to do was tell him... "Here's where you'll find this artifact and then just bring it to the Citadel and give it to the scientists there." Job done.
All true I guess. This is typical when additional lore is written in sequels, which in turn create unintended implications. Mass Effect is full of those, sadly.
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Post by sjsharp2010 on Mar 11, 2020 15:34:11 GMT
There's no indoctrination going on aboard the Citadel because of the station itself. This would be entirely fabricated by fans, not something that the story itself reveals, even implicitly. So boarding the Citadel has a different effect than when Saren and Benezia boarded Sovereign? They're both Reapers or Reaper tech. It was stated in ME1 that the longer one stays aboard a Reaper the more they seem to think Sovereign's will is correct (game said Saren, but Sovereign is manipulating Saren, not the other way around). The Citadel may have behavior modification techniques that are unnoticeable to anyone. It is possible I guess given how much the council were dragging their heels in terms of actually helping Shep neutralize Saren in ME1
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Post by KaiserShep on Mar 11, 2020 16:35:00 GMT
There's no indoctrination going on aboard the Citadel because of the station itself. This would be entirely fabricated by fans, not something that the story itself reveals, even implicitly. So boarding the Citadel has a different effect than when Saren and Benezia boarded Sovereign? They're both Reapers or Reaper tech. It was stated in ME1 that the longer one stays aboard a Reaper the more they seem to think Sovereign's will is correct (game said Saren, but Sovereign is manipulating Saren, not the other way around). The Citadel may have behavior modification techniques that are unnoticeable to anyone. Yes, the effects are clearly different, as neither any NPC, companion or Shepard him/herself seems at all affected by the Citadel. There's never an NPC we see at any point that provides clues as to the Citadel's effects on people's minds after long exposure. It's made clear in the narrative across all of the games that specific artifacts aside from the reapers themselves have a drastic effect on people, and this narrative language never makes its way to the Citadel itself. Things being possible in a fictional setting only gain weight when the story leans toward this being perhaps more than just a mere possibility.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2020 17:06:21 GMT
I fully agree with this. That is what I expected from the second game. Arrival should have been DLC for the first game. I've seen it argued on here that ME1 and ME2 should be flipped plot-wise, and honestly, that makes things a lot better, with a few minor changes (like Shepard not dying). Really, I think Arrival is fundamentally broken in terms of its plot logic. I get the whole idea of destroying the relay to stop the reapers, but the existence of both the Alpha Relay and the Project Rho artifact raise tons of nagging questions that make ME2 even more problematic in its place in the trilogy. Object Rho was a Reaper artifact which Kenson's team found. While they were studying it, it basically affected the whole team. They started seeing things, hearing whispers, etc. All signs that they were being indoctrinated by the artifact.
When Harbinger says "struggle if you wish your mind will be mine" to Shepard, it's really trying to get him indoctrinated too. If you run out the clock at the base, when the timer reaches zero Shepard see visions of the Reapers arrival. The same visions that one of Kenson's team members talked about. So yeah, Shepard was affected by the artifact.
Kenson and her team were perfectly normal before they found this base on the giant asteroid. They only got indoctrinated after being exposed to the artifact.
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Post by Polka Dot on Mar 11, 2020 17:09:13 GMT
There's no indoctrination going on aboard the Citadel because of the station itself. This would be entirely fabricated by fans, not something that the story itself reveals, even implicitly. So boarding the Citadel has a different effect than when Saren and Benezia boarded Sovereign? They're both Reapers or Reaper tech. It was stated in ME1 that the longer one stays aboard a Reaper the more they seem to think Sovereign's will is correct (game said Saren, but Sovereign is manipulating Saren, not the other way around). The Citadel may have behavior modification techniques that are unnoticeable to anyone. Sovereign is an actual reaper - apparently constructed using the gray goo of some harvested species, intended to preserve something of its knowledge, culture, perhaps personality. It is an independent actor with a personality and an agenda. Other reaper tech - the Citadel, the mass relays - are presented as tools used to push new species' development along particular pathways to hasten the harvest cycles. Note, too, that even when Legion (and the non-heretic geth) accepted reaper tech upgrades, they did not become indoctrinated agents for the reapers. EDI, too, had some reaper tech, and fought against the harvest throughout. If the Citadel were able to indoctrinate its residents, there would be little need for the harvests, no need for the reapers to ostensibly hang out in dark space between cycles, no need for them to leave a vanguard behind as the Citadel itself could do their dirty work in preparing the civilizations for harvest.
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